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Monday, June 27, 2005

- Bit of a bummer to read Nick Zito confirm that Bellamy Road is a “stretch” for the Travers.

"He's back on the track jogging; we'll turn him around soon,'' Zito said, referring to galloping. "He's a very athletic horse, but the Travers is a little bit of a stretch. Let's hope he makes the fall. The main thing is I talked to the Steinbrenner family and my main goal is going to try to get to the Breeders' Cup Classic.'' [Daily Racing Form]

Andromeda’s Hero had a slow 5 furlong work and is being pointed for the Jim Dandy, which at a mile and an eighth is probably about an eighth of how long a race would have to be for him to have a shot.

- You may want to take this into consideration if you’re planning a trip or twelve to Saratoga this summer.

On three of the Wednesdays (Aug. 3, 17, and 31), NYRA's nine-race cards will have two steeplechase races. In previous years, steeplechase racing was held on Thursdays and alternating Wednesdays. By condensing steeplechase racing to one day a week, management hopes to run more turf races on the flat. [DRF]

It’s thank heaven for simulcasting on those days. It hasn't been all that long really since there was no simulcasting permitted there. Even at Aqueduct for the downstate simulcast, there would be no other tracks offered, while not far away, the Meadowlands had the Spa and around 10 other tracks as well. For many years, the harness tracks and regional OTBs were able to prohibit any thoroughbred simulcasts after 7:30 P.M. So, it didn't matter if there were four of them across the track in the 9th from Turf Paradise, when the clock struck 7:30:00, the scene shifted to this annoying guy Frank Drucker doing the telecast from Yonkers Raceway; I wanted to fucking shoot this guy sometimes. When the OTB channel first started carrying the Meadowlands, Frank Drucker was in control of when you saw what. So naturally all the races from Yonkers with 3-5 shots going wire to wire from the 1 hole would be on live, while the far more competitive and bettable Meadowlands races got short shrift. They eventually changed this, possibly because I called to complain, and thoroughbred races are now carried all night and into the wee hours with racing from Australia, but it's these little things over the years that demonstrate how incompetently racing and wagering has been conducted in this state, and it's not all NYRA's fault. They didn't pass all those idiotic restrictions that it took years to finally remove.

Also note that the Saratoga yearling sale has been cut back to two nights from three, and the catalog declined substantially, by over 27%.